Human Nature
by lrhaboggle
Summary: The Haunted Mask is not evil, as Carly Beth finally sees. Instead, it is nothing more than the true face of humanity, the dark side of life that civilization has tried to hide with a mask of its own. Well, the jig is up, and it's time for the truth to come out. Now, the very last mask, the mask of sanity, will come off and reveal the savage face of ugly truth lying below.


It had been several months since the last Haunted Mask battle and, so far, the thing had been quiet. Carly Beth was still saddled with it as a burden, but it had not attempted to harm her in any way, shape or form of late. Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe not. All Carly Beth knew was that she was still unreasonably angry all the time. Despite the Haunted Mask not using its demonic influence on her, Carly Beth still felt very vengeful and bitter towards the world. Her family, friends and teachers had all assured her that it was no more than the typical teenage hormones, but Carly Beth wasn't so sure. Was every teenager supposed to feel this angry this often? Did every teenager fantasize about murder as often and as graphically as she did? Did every teenager get mad at nothing? Did every teenager suddenly feel so pissed off that they had to hold onto something just to keep from going insane? Carly Beth didn't think so, but nobody gave her the benefit of the doubt. It was just hormones.

"Small Nose! Duck Face! Shortie! Midget! Ugly!" the insults came hard and fast from a small group of Carly Beth's peers, male and female both. She tried her best to ignore them, but today, she could bear it no longer. In her earlier days, such insults would've made her run and/or cry. Today, however, they filled her with an animalistic rage.

"Shut up. Shut up! SHUT UP!" she screeched, and then she lunged at the nearest one of her tormentors and went at it. She was totally unapologetic when two teachers and a cop had to pry her off of her enemies as they lay in puddles of their own blood. Her rage was unstoppable now. Their insults would not go unpunished.

"Good God, Caldwell! Stop!" the high school's officer shouted as Carly Beth continued to scream, bite, claw, kick and punch at whatever she could. She even lashed out at the cop and the two teachers trying to restrain her.

It took time, but she did finally settle down. She was oddly satisfied to see that she had broken three noses, two finger and two pairs of glasses. Of course, such behavior had earned her a suspension and arrest, but she was still unapologetic.

"What do you have to say for yourself?!" her mother demanded after school that day when she came to pick her daughter up after receiving a call from the principal that Carly Beth had just assaulted four of her classmates.

"I wish I had gotten a few more blows in before I was interrupted?" Carly Beth asked cheekily. Her mother had nearly blown a gasket.

After that, it was a correctional facility. But Carly Beth was just as unapologetic there as she was back in high school. She would not cause trouble unless provoked, but then, whenever she _was_ provoked, it always ended in bloodshed. It got so bad that she was left locked up in her cell almost around the clock just because nobody could trust her to go outside even for a little bit. A guard was posted at her door at all hours.

"I swear, you can't trust kids these days," Carly Beth's guard muttered in disgust as she peered through the window at Carly Beth. Carly Beth only shrugged calmly, the anger still roiling inside of her like a storm cloud. This correctional facility was not going to be able to contain her forever. It was only a minor setback to a major storm on the horizon. Her rage had not decreased at all in the time that she was here.

One night, Carly Beth woke up to a scratching sound right by her ear. She opened one eye to see the Haunted Mask clicking its teeth at her in the darkness. For the first time in her life, she smiled back at it. It was a smile of rage, hatred and greed. There was no affection in it at all, just pure opportunity and desire. Carly Beth no longer cared about good or evil, love or hatred. All she wanted was revenge and satisfaction for her rage. That was something the mask could give her. She no longer feared its power now. On the contrary, she embraced it. She was almost _glad_ to see it again, not even bothering to ask how it had found her. Maybe it had been with her all along. Maybe the Haunted Mask was a small piece of her now. Or maybe it hadn't found her, so much as _she_ had summoned _it_.

She was older now, smarter. She knew how to harness what the Haunted Mask could do. She wasn't afraid of it the way she had been as a child. She had embraced her true human nature and had reverted to her savage state. That old Carly Beth that was always so afraid all the time was nothing more than a fake. That Carly Beth had been the true mask. This more uninhibited one, locked up in a cell, was the real Carly Beth. It was the one not constrained or molded by civilization. This was the Carly Beth that was truly free to be Carly Beth, unapologetic and wild. And the Haunted Mask had shown all of this to her! That mask was not evil at all. That had only been a misconceived notion by her simple mind as a stupid child. Now she knew better. The Haunted Mask was not evil, it just showed people their true human nature, wild and untamed. The question was whether or not the hosts would obey their human nature, or try and fight and dispose of the mask. Carly Beth was now going with the former.

The Haunted Mask smiled down at her, pleased and impressed. Although it did indeed induce rage within its victims, it had not done such a thing to Carly Beth. The daily rage she felt was all her own. The daily rage Carly Beth suffered from had been generated purely from her, and the Haunted Mask, for once, had nothing to do with it. But that was why it was so very impressed with her. Never had it possessed a host that actually _wanted_ it to take over. Usually, the host always put up at least a bit of a fight, attempting to keep at least a bit of their "humanity", but Carly Beth was doing the total opposite, begging for it to come back to her. But that was because she understood the truth of the Mask and what it did for a person. She wasn't going to fight her human nature anymore. She was going to slip it back on and wear it, not as a mask, but as a face.

The Haunted Mask almost felt flattered, but there was no room for any sort of joy within its basic nature. It was the dark side of humanity, a mask of insanity. Its job was not to hurt, but to reveal. It revealed the truth about human nature. Carly Beth was just the only one to understand and embrace that fact. This aggression was only Human Nature, and it was more of a sin to try and repress it than it was to embrace it. This was who Carly Beth was born to be! Bullocks to anyone who tried to change her or insist that she could be "cured". The old Carly Beth was dead, and good riddance! She had been nothing more than society's little puppet. This newer, angrier Carly Beth was the real one, and she would rise like phoenix to burn anyone who stood in her path.

"My old friend," she whispered, and she had no reserves as she pulled the Haunted Mask on. Or maybe, it had slid itself over her head. She wasn't sure which of them had been more eager for this reunion. What she did know, however, was that her guard was going to be in for quite a surprise!

The next morning, Carly Beth feigned injury, crying out in pain until her officer finally came to see what was going on. The moment her cell door swung open, however, Carly Beth attacked. The last thing the officer ever saw was two yellow pinpricks of rage and hatred, then she felt a sharp pain in her neck as Carly Beth's fangs sank right into her jugular, ripping it out in one clean, fluid motion. Blood squirted from the wound as Carly Beth drew back, spitting out the bloody hunk of skin and muscle before riffling through the twitching guard's body until she had found the officer's gun. The Haunted Mask clicked its teeth again and Carly Beth nodded.

"You're my favorite, Carly Beth," the Haunted Mask said. It could already tell that it and its mistress were going to be together for a long time.

"We are going to have so much fun this year," she replied, thinking the exact same thing. Then she left her cell.

 **AN: Short Evil!Carly Beth fic that takes place several years after the first book and ignores the canon from any of the other one. In short, I just wanted to write an Evil!Carly Beth fic and it's supposed to pose the question of what a human being is. Is a human civil and decent, or is a human wild and vicious? This fic takes the latter route, subverting the book's idea that the mask is a monster that brings out the worst in us. Here, the mask only brings out the evil side of humanity that civilization has suppressed. Carly Beth has chosen to embrace this more primitive side of her nature as a human and this is the result. She doesn't see the mask as evil now. She sees it as the darker side of humanity, to either be repressed and condemned, or to be embraced as Carly Beth does. And in that, the mask stops being a mere mask, and becomes a real face of humanity. This mask of insanity has become a mask of sanity and a face of reality.**


End file.
